Slideshow: BMW Unveils Premium Electric Car

In a glitzy ceremony that featured a New Years’ Eve-style countdown in three cities around the world, BMW AG
unveiled its all-electric i3 this week.

The unveiling, peppered with references to sustainable power sources, marked BMW’s first foray into mass production of pure electric cars. “We are at the starting blocks of a new era -- the era of sustainable mobility,” BMW CEO Norbert Reithofer said in a web-based conference.

The rear-wheel-drive i3 is expected to hit the streets in the US in the second quarter of 2014. It is considered unique in its prominent use of carbon-fiber-reinforced plastics (CFRP), its optional range-extending two-cylinder engine, and in its from-the-ground-up design philosophy. BMW expects it to be priced at $41,350 before federal tax breaks.

Click on the image below for a closer look at BMW's all-electric i3.

BMW’s i3will cost $41,350 before federal incentives and will offer 81 to 99 miles of all-electric range.(Source: BMW)

During the press conference -- held in New York, London, and Beijing -- BMW executives emphasized that the i3 would appeal to environmentally smart buyers of premium vehicles. “We can see our customers’ values are really changing,” said Ian Robertson, BMW’s chief sales officer. “They want sheer driving pleasure, but with a clear conscience.”

The i3 will serve those changing values with its use of a 22-kWh lithium-ion battery. The battery, slightly smaller than the Nissan Leaf’s 24-kWh unit, will nevertheless produce an all-electric range of 81 to 99 miles, BMW said. Liberal use of CFRP helped enable that range. A CFRP-based passenger cell will sit atop an aluminum “drive module” that incorporates the suspension, the battery, the drive system, and structural components, thus minimizing vehicle mass.

”Our expertise in manufacturing with this material makes the passenger cell extremely strong and lightweight,” Reithofer said. He added that the company produces carbon-fiber components using hydro-electric power. It also employs wind power to build the i3, he said.

For those who want more than 80 or 90 miles for their investment, the company also said it is offering a range extender. By mounting a 650cc two-cylinder engine adjacent to the electric motor and above the rear axle, BMW said it could boost the car’s maximum range to nearly 180 miles. The optional range extender is expected to push the price tag to about $45,000.

Industry analysts estimate that BMW may have already invested more than a billion dollars in its i brand, which encompasses multiple vehicles, including the i3 and the hybrid-electric i8. That investment is proof the company is not just doing the i3 as a so-called “compliance vehicle” (to meet California-type mandates), but as a cornerstone of a larger plan. “It’s one thing for a startup like Tesla to do an electric vehicle from the ground up,” Thilo Koslowski, vice president and distinguished analyst for Gartner Inc., told Design News. “But for a vehicle manufacturer that sells over a million vehicles a year worldwide to do something like this, this is a big risk.”

Koslowski said that the 2,600-lb i3 will probably compete most directly with the Tesla Model S, a premium electric car with a price tag that’s about $30,000 higher than the i3’s. He wondered, however, whether the vehicle’s character will be right for traditional BMW buyers. “At the end of the day, it’s still a very small vehicle,” he told us. “It looks different from their other vehicles, and that could drive away some of those consumers who like BMWs.”

You're right. The Eco-toy market is dominant. I listened to a panel discussion with many who were instrumental in getting the first Earth Day up and running. They lamented the fact that the holiday is just another opportunity for consumerism.

On a lighter note--The funniest thing I've ever seen on a Prius was a license plate that read "PIOUS".

It has always amused me that they chose Lenin's birthday for earthday.

That soemone would put that on their own Prius is hilarious. Some folks act like all Prius owners are eco-nazis but most of them just seem to want an affordable mid-size car that gets great mpg. And that is why, IMO, it dominates the market-the combination of price, utility and mileage is the best.

However my VFR800 get similar mpg and puts a grin on my face every day. My "Eco-toy".

That's a great license plate, Nadine. Apparently, Prius owners have a good sense of humor. "Curb Your Enthusiasm" did a show poking fun at Prius owners, even though Larry David himself is a Prius owner and an avowed environmental activist.

I have to ask an engineering question here, if it has so much carbon fibre that it has 90km range with a 22kWhr battery, then what does its wind surface to weight ration look like? What I'm getting at is I drive a 1.5t 3.0l powered petrol car (which does get quite good economy on the highway) and when I'm driving at 100kph and I get a 100kph wind gust from the side I feel a real tug on the steering. In my wife's 900kg petrol car I feel the tug a little stronger. What happens in this car that looks like it might be the size of a medium SUV and maybe weighs only 70% of its traditional sister when that happens? Just a thought.

The question of why you get so much feedback in the wheel...a sideways tug with side windload is not only a function of the weight, but also a function of the suspension setup and the location of aerodynamic center of gravity (ACG) relative to the mass/physical (CG) location. This is not magic, it is all related to applied phyics.

If you are an engineering person or have taken physics, remember the free body diagrams. There 3 mutually perpendicular axes of the vehicle to consider a vertical axis (yaw axis), a longitudinal axis (roll axis), and cross body axis (pitch axis) which all originate from the vehicle CG in 3D.

Remember the concept of forces applied at a distance of leverage creating a torque moment? Think now in terms of vehicle response in a rotational mode around the yaw axis located at the CG, these are the torque moments that will generate steering feedback. The net torque moment will be fed back through the steering mechanism for the driver to experience.

If the ACG is aligned with the CG, there is no net rotational torque moment to create feedback into the steering mechanism, and there will be merely sideload roll torque around the imaginary vehicle axis running parallel to the wheels.. The location of roll torque moment relative to vehicle CG around that logitudinal roll axis....in combination with spring/bushing stiffnes will dictate the amount of roll response of the vehicle to side winds.

BMW certainly should have designed the suspension properly in consideration of the above, and the Center of Gravity (CG) of the vehicle should be very low with batteries and motor assembly sitting low on the vehicle.

Driving the final vehicle will tell you how they did at dealing with the vehicle dynamics/physics.

That is a great license plate for a Prius driver, Nadine! Nice to see even the eco-minded types have a sense of humor (as I assume it is meant to be sarcastic, right? :)) On the earth day note, yes, it doesn't take much for any U.S. holiday, even one meant to celebrate nature, can become a reason to buy and sell things. :(

That's an excellent question, etmax -- one that applies to virtually every vehicle with a carbon fiber body. Unfortunately, it's not one that I'm likely to get an answer to. I checked BMW's 24-page press release and it doesn't even give the drag coefficient (as far as I can tell), let alone the wind-surface-to-weight-ratio. Sorry.

A few weeks ago, Ford Motor Co. quietly announced that it was rolling out a new wrinkle to the powerful safety feature called stability control, adding even more lifesaving potential to a technology that has already been very successful.

A well-known automotive consultant who did an extensive teardown of BMW’s i3 all-electric car said its design is groundbreaking in multiple ways. “We’ve torn down about 450 cars, and we’ve never analyzed anything like this before.”

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